Language tools

Wikimedia Foundation engineering activity

Language tools

Internationalization and Localization tools to enable use of Wikimedia projects in various languages.

Group:	Language engineering
Start:	2011-08
End:
Team:	Niklas Laxström (dev), Santhosh Thottingal (dev), Amir Aharoni (dev), Pau Giner (design), Runa Bhattacharjee (QA and communications)
Management:	Alolita Sharma (Director of Engineering i18n/L10n), Siebrand Mazeland (Product Manager)
Status:	See updates

• [edit status] • [add new]
  2013-05-monthly:
  The last round of major bugs have been fixed in the Universal Language Selector (ULS) before we start phased its deployment over the month of June across hundreds of Wikimedia websites. Communications announcements have been started for the first phase of deployment which includes removal of Narayam and WebFonts from sites before ULS is rolled out with the same integrated feature set. Test scenarios for ULS have been identified in detail. Implementation of automated tests is in progress. A combination of ULS integration and cross browser testing is in progress. Final performance tweaks are in progress before we get ready to launch the redesigned home page of translatewiki.net in June. The monthly version of the Mediawiki Language Extension Bundle (MLEB) was released on May 29.

Rationale

If you can't type in your language, or if your operating system doesn't natively have the ability to display your language on the web, you are impeded from reading or editing Wikimedia projects. As Wikimedia reaches into strategic priority regions like India, ensuring that we eliminate all barriers to access and participation is escalating in priority.

Key deliverables

Deliverables of this project will likely include:

• Consistent support for web fonts as needed, building on the web fonts extension
• Consistent availability of input methods for all supported languages in any Wikimedia projects (e.g. it should be possible to type in Hindi on the English Wikipedia), building on the Narayam extension
• Support for new input methods (including potentially on-screen keyboards) and new character sets
• Porting/implementing relevant support on mobile devices
• Improvement of RTL support, especially in a bidirectional context
• Resolution of other critical issues, e.g. resolve encoding conflicts with search engines

Timeline

• The team formed in July/August 2011, at which point requirements gathering, prioritization and development began to officially kick off.
• You can access the full list of the team's todos for this sprint (two weeks period) on Mingle.

Additional documents

• User requirements:
  • Internationalization and localization tools/Requirements/Indic language support
• Specifications:
• Software design document:
• Test plan:
• Documentation plan:
• User interface design docs:
• Schedule:
• Task management:
• Release management plan:
• Communications plan:
• Status updates

Impact Measurement and Metrics

• Internationalization and localization tools/Impact Measurement and Metrics

Communications

• Blog
  • Kiwix localisation is supported at translatewiki.net, Gerard Meijssen, Wikimedia blog, August 20th, 2011.
  • The Localisation team brings you input methods, Gerard Meijssen, Wikimedia blog, September 15, 2011.
  • Babel extension live on the WMF projects, Gerard Meijssen, Wikimedia blog, September 21st, 2011
  • ...and more
• IRC office hours
  • 2012-02-21
  • 2012-04-18
  • 2012-05-23
• Localisation development demonstrations (slides on Commons [also for one missing here])
  • 2012-04-17
  • 2012-05-01
  • 2012-05-15
  • 2012-05-29
  • 2012-06-12
  • 2012-06-26
• Other
  • m:Translation tools workshop, 2012
  • commons:Category:WMF localisation team